Jonah Lehrer delves into the science of self-gratification and the work of Walter Mischel.

Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”

For some reason, I’m tying this to Emotional Intelligence. I think I saw the videos of Micshel’s work during a college class and the professor related it to EI.